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BillingViews survey - the sequel
Alex Leslie - Dec 16, 06:53 AM
The recent BillingViews survey into the biggest barriers to next generation billing created so much interest that we decided to re-run it – with a different audience.
The first survey which you can download here was amongst service providers only.
The audience that I used to validate or disprove the findings was the attendees at the recent ETIS Billing Group meeting.
The audience was broader than before and although there was a majority of service providers present there were also a good cross section of vendors and consultants. The number of respondents was almost the same.
Two of the results were particularly interesting –
The first was that the percentage who saw budget as the biggest barrier to next generation billing reduced from 22% to 9%.
The second was that the percentage who saw a lack of understanding of the business benefits as the biggest barrier went up to 36%, the same percentage as those who saw legacy systems as the problem. This was an increase from 31% and 43% respectively.
I was surprised when I saw the results of the first survey that such a high percentage viewed the lack of understanding of the business benefits as the major barrier but when that became the equal biggest reason in the second survey I was doubly surprised, or perhaps horrified.
In a recent interview with a large service provider I asked him what made him laugh. He said ‘that IT ends up selling business agility to the business’. It also makes him cry.
The real question is – what can we do about this? It is obvious that we need people to sell the potential that billing can provide to the business and therefore we people who can translate ‘billing’ into ‘business’ and get access to the decision makers.
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